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English sparkling wine is becoming better than Champagne because of climate change, the Environment Secretary has claimed.

Michael Gove, said that British vineyards were now being rated higher than French wineries and that the warming climate could see the industry boom.

Speaking at the BBCs Countryfile Live at Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire, Mr Gove said that Britain’s heatwave summer could become ‘the new normal’ as our traditional rainy holiday season was replaced by more continental conditions.

Although he said that soaring temperatures brought challenges for farmers, he said the new climate also offered opportunities for grape growers who were seeing ‘bumper’ harvests.

“I was in East Sussex the weekend before last, talking to someone there who bought a farm, who has converted it into a highly successful business producing English sparkling wine,” he said.

“It’s been assessed independently as of higher quality and better tasting than the finest Champagne vineyards.

“One of opportunities of a changing climate is the chalky soil of parts of England, combined with the weather that we are having, means that English sparkling wine will have a bumper harvest.

“It will soon bring a level of cheer to British drinkers greater than that provided by French champagne. It is a harbinger of the inventiveness, of the creativeness and the resilience, the imagination and the sheer joie de vivre that you can find here in Britain.”

England’s chalk soils have always been ideal for bubbly, but the warming climate means that grapes are growing better than ever, and established French wine makers such as Taittinger have started planting vines across huge swathes of the British countryside.

In the past 12 months, British UK wine producers planted a record one million vines, increasing production by two million more bottles of wine annually.

A study commissioned by Laithwaite’s Wine last year showed expected changes to temperature and rainfall in Britain could create opportunities for viticulturists in areas as far north as Edinburgh.

They forecast that England could be one of the world’s leading producers of wine by 2100.

In 2016 the Wine and Spirit Trade Association put our home-grown fizz to a blind tasting against some world class Champagnes in Paris. In two of the categories, the English sparkling came out on top.

And this year for the first time in the Sommelier Wine Awards’ history English sparkling wine received more gold medals than Champagne.

Michael Gove said farmers needed to adapt in the warming climate

English fizz won seven golds, while Champagne’s performance slumped compared to last year, receiving just six golds, half the number achieved in 2017.

Mr Gove said Britain had to accept that the climate was changing, and growers needed to learn to adapt.

“We have to face the fact there are particularly challenging circumstances this summer. We need to show a greater degree of flexibility,” he said.

“Our climate is changing and we have to encounter the fact that the summer we are currently living through will become, if not the new normal, then certainly each summer is going to be more like this one and less like summers that we may remember from our childhoods.

“We need to think hard about what we can do both what we can do mitigate climate change but also how we adapt to how we operate.”